bering 901,644, as against a rural population of 969,643. In this, as in some other respects, the conditions of life in California suggest resemblances to those existing in the Australian colonies. Australia, together with New Zealand and Tasmania, had in 1891 a population slightly less than that of the United States in 1790. This population is scattered over an area several times more extensive than was that of this country before Napoleon sold us Louisiana; and yet in Australia a larger proportion of the entire population resides in cities of 8,000 inhabitants or upward than is the case in the United States even to-day.

The ratio of urban to rural population is increasing rapidly over almost all the civilized world. In many countries large areas have recently experienced an absolute loss of rural inhabitants. The census of 1891 shows that the population of the urban sanitary districts of England increased since 1881 about fifteen per cent, as against an increase in the rural districts of less than four per cent. Some of the more purely rural counties of England show an actual decrease of aggregate population, as do no less than nine of the twelve counties of Wales and sixteen out of the thirty-three counties of Scotland. In the last-mentioned country the rural population of the entire kingdom is a fraction less than it was ten years ago. In Ireland the contrast is still greater. Out of its thirty-two counties there are only two which have not less population than in 1881. These two are Dublin and Antrim, containing the cities of Dublin and Belfast respectively. The sixteen Irish cities and towns with 10,000 inhabitants or over have increased on the average at the rate of something over six per cent, while the rest of the country has suffered a loss of nearly twelve per cent. In France the increase of total population in the five years from 1886 to 1891 was but 124,289, while the gain in the population of the fifty-six cities having over 30,000 inhabitants was 340,396. Outside of these cities there was an actual decrease of 216,107. In Germany two thirds of the total increase of population between 1885 and 1890 was in the 150 places having over 20,000 inhabitants each, although these places contain not more than one fifth of the entire population of the empire.

Something over a century ago Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, arguing against the establishment of manufactures in this country, declared that," generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandmen is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption." Popular feeling almost everywhere seems to view with something of Jefferson's apprehension that change in the proportion of urban to rural population now so

rapidly going on. In almost all countries those who desire to change existing systems of taxation try to enlist in their behalf this popular feeling by ascribing the decline of rural population to the operation of the fiscal machinery they dislike. Thus, in free-trade England, "fair-traders" assert that some scheme of retaliatory duties is required to arrest the depopulation of the rural districts. In France an extremely protective tariff has recently been adopted, largely at the demand of the agricultural classes. In the United States, on the other hand, those who are opposed to protective taxes are equally positive in their assertions that such taxes are the principal cause of the decrease of population in so many fertile sections. Doubtless, like other local conditions, tariff changes may help or hinder the operation of the general causes which are at work the world over. Those causes, however, were not set in motion by legislation, and could not be permanently checked by it, unless it should take so drastic a form as to be fatal to the material welfare of the whole community.

That the urban shall grow more rapidly than the rural population is, under present conditions, an economic necessity. The generally low prices of agricultural products during the last few years unite with most other available data to show that the supply of such products is increasing at least as fast as and probably faster than the increase in aggregate population. In this country, although the census of 1890 showed an increase of but twelve per cent in the rural population, and of less than twenty-five per cent in the aggregate population, the average production of wheat for the decade preceding the census of 1890 was forty-four per cent greater than that for the decade preceding the census of 1880; that of corn forty-three per cent greater, and of oats eighty-five per cent greater. In the cotton belt, the only agricultural portion of the older States in which there has been any considerable increase of rural population, we see in the great overproduction of cotton for several years in succession what would necessarily happen in other staple products if as large a proportion of the population as formerly attempted to earn their living by tilling the soil.

In a neighborhood in which all the tillable land was taken up thirty years or more ago, as is the case in all or nearly all the counties of the older States in which the rural population has diminished, there are general causes at work to bring about the result. The constant and steady improvement in agricultural machinery enables fewer hands than were required thirty years ago to cultivate the land with equal efficiency. To employ the same number of men as formerly, closer cultivation would be necessary. Perhaps, because such closer cultivation will not pay when its products have to be sold in competition with the more easily raised crops of the trans-Mississippi or trans-Missouri

States, or perhaps because the conservatism which is so marked a trait of agricultural populations makes it exceedingly difficult to bring about any radical change in agricultural methods, higher farming has not made much progress. It must also be remembered that both in Europe and the United States the birth-rate is diminishing. One of the results of this diminution is that the children constitute a smaller proportion of the entire population than formerly, and consequently a total population of the same aggregate number contains more workers.

Another cause of decrease in the aggregate population of rural communities, and one perhaps as potent as either of those already mentioned, is the ever-increasing competition of factory-made goods with the products of the handicrafts. There must be fewer and fewer country tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, carpenters, and other artisans who can earn their living in competition with the machine-made goods which the steadily decreasing cost of railroad transportation enables the great factories in the manufacturing cities and towns to send into every neighborhood and sell more cheaply than the isolated mechanic working with his own hands or with simple and inexpensive machinery possibly can. Those who are forced to give up the attempt to earn their bread by working at their trade in their old homes among their neighbors must seek employment in the cities. The whole tendency of the factory system, combined with the cheapening of transportation rates, is to draw away from the country districts almost all the population not directly engaged in tilling the soil. The social and intellectual attractions of city life, especially for the brighter and more active-minded of the country youth, are unquestionably powerful factors in building up the cities at the expense of the country districts. The two last-named causes-namely, the diminution of the number of rural handicraftsmen in all localities easily accessible by railroad from large cities, and the attractiveness of city life to portions of the country population, when city life is brought within the range of their observation-are doubtless chiefly responsible for the fact that the decrease of the rural population has been most general in precisely those portions of the country in which cities and towns are most numerous and in which the railroad facilities are the best.

In this country it is possible that the actual decrease in rural population during the decade was not so great as the census would indicate. To properly fill up the schedules of the eleventh census required so much work upon the part of the enumerators that the fees allowed them in country districts were in many, if not in most cases, utterly inadequate to give them a reasonable compensation for their work. Baltimore County, Maryland, is a very thickly settled agricultural region, and yet in this county a number of in

telligent and industrious enumerators working from ten to twelve hours a day were not able to average a daily wage of more than two dollars each, out of which they had to provide a team and to pay its expenses and their own while away from their homes. Under such conditions it is not impossible that some of the less conscientious enumerators may have slighted remote corners of their districts. As the complaint of the inadequacy of the pay was quite general, and entirely justifiable, it is possible that there were considerable omissions in many rural neighborhoods.

D

AN AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION.

BY PROF. CLARENCE M. WEED.

URING the last half-century the agriculturists of the United States have constantly suffered from the attacks of two classes of organisms, which have disputed with them the possession of their crops. These organisms are, first, the noxious insects; and, second, the parasitic fungi. To these tiny foes American agriculture yields annually many million dollars' worth of her choicest products. They form an omnipresent host of taxgatherers, taking possession of the farmer's crops and enforcing their onerous demands without process of law, unless preventive measures are vigorously prosecuted. They are no respecters of persons: like the rain, they fall upon the fields of both the just and the unjust.

The authorities best able to judge have estimated the annual loss in the United States due to these little pests at more than half a billion dollars. Noxious insects, according to Dr. C. V. Riley, the distinguished entomologist of our National Department of Agriculture, occasion losses in the United States which are "in the aggregate enormous, and have been variously estimated at from $300,000,000 to $400,000,000 annually," and parasitic fungi -the rusts, smuts, blights, mildews, rots, and similar maladies of growing plants-according to competent authorities, cause an equal or greater loss. In single States and single seasons the damage is often frightful in extent. During some of the great chinch-bug epidemics the loss in Illinois occasioned by this one insect has amounted to over $73,000,000 a year; and in seasons not marked by an outbreak of such a great crop pest the injury is much more severe than is ordinarily supposed. The official entomologist of the State just named, Prof. S. A. Forbes-after years of careful field observation and statistical study-has recently expressed his belief that "the insects of the State of Illinois derive

as large a profit from the agriculture of this great agricultural State as do the farmers themselves."

Fortunately, however, much progress has recently been made in a knowledge of efficient means of preventing this vast drain upon our productive system. By the introduction of a simple mechanical contrivance for the application of insecticides and fungicides, the methods of combating these foes have been revolutionized; and in many localities where the production of special crops had been abandoned new life has been put into their development. This contrivance is commonly called the spraying machine. It consists essentially of a force pump and spray nozzle connected with a reservoir, by means of which certain substances that have a destructive effect upon insect and fungous life may be rapidly and evenly

distributed over the outer surfaces of trees, shrubs, vines, and herbaceous plants.

d

FIG. 1.-CODLING MOTH: a, injured apple; b, place where egg is laid; e, larva; d, pupa; i, cocoon; g, f, moth; h, head of larva. (After Riley.)

In America the spraying machine seems to have first come into general use to prevent the injuries of the codling moth or apple worm. This is a very destructive and widely distributed insect, for which there had before been known no remedy that can compare with spraying in cheapness and efficiency. These worms hatch from eggs laid in the calyx ends of the newly formed apples by a small, chocolate-colored moth (represented at ƒ and g, Fig. 1). These eggs are deposited in spring or early summer, from the time the young apples are as large as peas until they attain the size of small hickory nuts. The eggs are placed on the outside of the fruit, and the resulting worms nibble at the skin, finally biting through and eating toward the core. They continue feeding for three or four weeks, when they become three fourths of an inch long, whitish or pinkish-white in color, and of the general form shown in Fig. 1, e. They are now full grown as larvæ, and leave the apples to spin, in some temporary shelter, slight silken cocoons (i), in which they transform to pupa (d), to change a fortnight later into full-fledged moths. These moths deposit eggs about midsummer for a second brood of worms.

The earlier preventives of codling-moth injury included such partially effective measures as banding the trees with wisps of